Warner's mind 'a little bit clouded' - Ponting

David Warner needs to clear his mind and play his natural attacking game if he is to succeed in the 50-over format, according to Australia's acting captain Ricky Ponting. Warner has had little impact in the Commonwealth Bank Series, a trend that continued at the SCG on Friday when he failed to pick Lasith Malinga's change of pace and was caught at mid-on for 13.

So far in the tri-series, Warner has made 6, 34, 18 and 13, and his one-day international average of 20.07 seems unfathomable given how well he has adapted to Test and Twenty20 international cricket. Ponting, who also spoke of his own slump after Friday's loss to Sri Lanka, believes Warner must avoid overthinking and free himself to play his way.

"He probably hasn't got the results he would have liked in one-day cricket in his relatively short career so far," Ponting said. "But the one thing that players like David can't afford to do is second guess themselves. Gilly [Adam Gilchrist] was exactly the same. They're hand-eye players. They've got to see the ball and hit the ball and not think too much about it.

"But we all know what it's like as batsmen when you're just not getting the results you're after. Sometimes it's the stuff between your ears that gets a little bit clouded and makes playing your natural game a little bit hard. I think that's probably what Davey is going through right at the moment."

Although Warner was named as Michael Clarke's vice-captain at the start of the series, the selectors decided against asking him to lead the side in Clarke's absence, preferring to allow him to focus on his own performance. That will continue on Sunday when he faces the top-of-the-table Indians in his first one-day international at the Gabba, a venue at which he has not scored a half-century in any format.

Ponting believes one of the keys to success for Warner is a slight improvement in his understanding of the position of the match and which bowlers should be targeted. At the SCG, he fell playing a big shot from what turned out to be the last ball of Malinga's opening spell, which gave the Sri Lankans a strong start.

"I thought the pressure they were able to put on our top order was probably as much pressure as we've been under in the series so far, for the initial six or seven overs," Ponting said. "Davey probably only had to get through another couple of balls of the spell and he would have been through it.

"They're the sort of things we have to think about as batters, identifying when their strike bowlers might be coming to the end of spells and make sure we get through it. Today we weren't good enough to do it."